Sunday 30th November 2014 @ 4:00 AM

Wallfixers

It’s the season of exams and final essays, so I’m going to revisit the Order of the Wallfixers, the group of alien wizards I use when I am running behind on sketches:

Drinnz

On Drinnz’s homeworld, travel between the universes has been known and utilized for generations, so when Drinnz was approached by the Wallfixers who had detected his potential for extreme cosmic magic, there was less culture shock than most new Wallfixer recruits go through. Drinnz quickly caught on and became a hero of great renown among the many species and universes in his neck of the woods, then he used that fame became a politician. Now a high-ranking Chief and uses that position to try to promote causes that benefit the Wallfixers. He’s also a frequent target for assassination attempts by criminals from all over the multiverse.

Plplppow

Plplppow was born in a particularly crime-ridden neighborhood, where it seemed like the only way out was to become a criminal yourself, or die a victim. Plplppow proved them wrong by developing magical powers that only occur once in ever several billion sentient beings. Nobody had thought of that one. Plplppow was quickly recruited by the Wallfixers and had no qualms about leaving her scumhole home to find adventures. And so far, she hasn’t made any plans to go back.

Plplppow, like Lupplol from last time, is a Pllvm. But Plplppow is from an Alternate Universe Pllvm Homeworld. I think that, among the Wallfixers, Pllvm are the most common species. They and their alternate homeworlds take the place of what would be humans and alternate Earths if this group had been made by someone who thought humans were worth reading about, instead of by PDR.

Sunday 16th November 2014 @ 4:00 AM

Twinklyn

Uncertainty. Is a particle in one place or another? Both at the same time? There’s no way to know. Reality is a trickster. As with most concepts, there is a Space God to embody Uncertainty. Twinklyn is the trickster of the Astrolympians. He has a thing for preventing people from knowing things hat could help them, usually with the intention of causing chaos on a broader scale. He only tends to associate with his Space God family when there’s a chance for some mischief.

I kinda threw this one together to prove to myself that I can still expand on specific elements from the Superhero/villain years. Twinklyn here is the Astrolympian equivalent to chaos gods like Eris, but filtered through the omnipotent alien type, like Mxyzptlk or the Great Gazoo. Unlike those guys, though, I envision Twinklyn being extremely dour, taking his job extremely seriously. I just want to be different, I guess.

Hatwearer

Sometimes, when someone is alone at night, they might see a figure off in the distance. In the darkness, it is impossible to make out any features, except for the hat. The figure is always described as wearing a hat. Often the experience lasts for hours, in some cases it has even happened over recurring nights, but it always ends the same way: The person who saw the Hatwearer is found eviscerated.

It seems likely that the Hatwearer has been active for centuries, but it is only in recent times, with the advances in technology like texting, that has allowed the victims to get the word out about what they see.

Hatwearer is my attempt at creating a monster in the style of the Internet horror stories that are, regretably, called Creepypasta. He’s a pretty generic monster (which is actually quite appropriate for the genre), but I could find a use for him someday.

Sunday 9th November 2014 @ 4:00 AM

Wallfixers

The Order of Wallfixers is a multiverse-spanning group of alien wizards. Every now and then, a sort of glitch occurs and a sentient being is born with an inherent mystical power to travel between universes. It’s extremely rare, but in the infinite expanses of countless universes, rare things happen more often than one might suppose. Here’s some of them:

Lupplol

Lupplol was an ordinary kid growing up in the seas of the Pllvm homeworld. It seemed likely that he’d go into the family business, herding foodfish, but he always wanted something more. But suddenly, a dark force appeared in the local oceans: a dark force from Beyond Space and Time! Leeching off the life-energies of the Pllvm, a daemonic monster began to materialize, an army of warped Pllvm serving as its minions. Lupplol’s family was among those converted. The boy’s life was ruined, until a strange visitor, also from another world, came and showed Lupplol the vast power within him. Using his new-found magical ability, the boy banished the dark force, ended its threat to his world, and took his place among the Wallfixers.

Noado Buk

Noado Buk was trained by Dryon Veha, one of the most powerful Wallfixers of all time, but Noado’s sights were never set as high as Veha’s. While Veha thinks of things in the large scale, combatting threats that a mortal mind can scarcely comprehend, Noado prefers to help individuals on a smaller level. At first there was contention between mentor and protoge, talk of squandered potential, but Noado argued that making things better on the small scale would add up to things being better on a larger scale. Veha was satisfied and now Noadu wanders the cosmos doing good wherever he can.

Okay, I hadn’t hoped to get into these guys so quickly, because the Wallfixers are my “buffer” characters for Supernatural Sunday year. They’re easy to make up and I can post a couple whenever I have had a week in which I couldn’t get something better done. This was such a week, so here are some of them.

One thing that always bothers me in stories about multiple universes in peril, especially in comics, is how human-centric everything is. In comics any such story (in which the universes are explicitly called Alternate Earths) and the fate of these universes always falls in the hands of the human heroes. I’m sick of anthropocentric bias and I’m going to fight it as much as possible. That’s what the Wallfixers are about. If there are any humans in the group, they’re an extreme minority. Both of today’s Wallfixers are aliens from aquatic worlds (one of those worlds we have seen before) because not breathing air separates them from humanity even more.

Sunday 22nd June 2014 @ 4:00 AM

The Devil Queen from Outer Space

Descending to Earth in a UFO that looks like a ball of flame, the Devil Queen from Outer Space is Queen Malefactra, an archmonarch of evil with a desire to conquer the human race and set up a hell on Earth. With an army of sci-fi devilry (robots made of skeletons, laser pitchforks, etc.), she has the means to do it!

When she’s not actively trying to conquer the world, Malefactra is a temptress looking to make deals. At the cost of your immortal soul, she can use her nano-magic to make your dreams come true, though it always seems to find some way to make sure it also furthers her own cause.

This was just an attempt at designing a character with that sense of fun that I think superhero comics need to embrace. The theatrics of hell symbolism and the grandeur of outer space invaders seem like a perfect fit for superheroes.

Flood

Alphonse Gordon was one of the founding members of the Strange Squad. In the 1960s the group was assembled from a group of scientists who had been mutated from experiments. Flood had accidentally transferred his consciousness into a body of water, which he soon learned to control and animate. Though he did the heroism thing with the Strange Squad, it was only for the money, so when someone else offered more money, he happily accepted and left the team. Though, deep down, he admits he seems to have lost out considering that the team has gone on to be an internationally successful organization and he is just a criminal for hire, he takes it in stride and continues working for whoever is willing to pay.

Another very easily drawn character. I would assume that being a living puddle would suck.

Sunday 15th June 2014 @ 4:00 AM

Mummylord

Thousands of years ago in Egypt a cult of magicians raided the country as part of their worship of heretical beings of darkness and evil. Though they were eventually driven from the land by the Egyptian armies (and kept from heading south by the Lightning Lioness). The cult retreated to their temple and committed mass suicide. Their story did not end there.

When archaeologists uncovered the temple, they accidentally reawakened the leader of the cult, the Mummylord. Alive once more in the modern age, the Mummylord is now trying to perfom mystic rituals to revive his followers as an army of mummies bent on world domination.

My extensive scientific research has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that mummies and the superhero genre are a good fit for one another. Probably there should be at least one mummy character in every superhero title.

Strike

Jenessa Jefferson is, by day, a fairly ordinary young woman. She works at a coffee shop and pays rent and phone bills and all that sort of thing. But she has another identity. When approached by someone willing to pay the right price, Jenessa Jefferson becomes Strike. After being caught in a strange beam from space as a teenager, Jenessa found herself able to convert her body into a living burst of yellow lightning for about an hour at a time. The ability to travel through electrical devices, damaging them if that is the desire, makes Strike an ideal industrial saboteur. She can also pack a devastating punch to any do-gooders who want to challenge her.

This here… this here was a really, really easy character to draw. If I ever have to draw a superhero story I actually want to be decent, a character like Strike is a necessity to make sure I can get through it. Probably I’m not going to do that, though. I can put up with my drawing for sketches, but I do feel like my drawing abilities are lacking for stories I want to tell.

Anyway, why is cartoon electricity almost always yellow? It seems to always be blue in the real world.